Fiona Woollard presents an original defence of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, according to which doing harm seems much harder to justify than merely allowing harm. She argues that the Doctrine is best understood as a principle that protects us from harmful imposition, and offers a moderate account of our obligations to offer aid to others.

The symposion was a key cultural phenomenon in ancient Greece. This book investigates its place in ancient Greek society and thought by exploring the rhetorical dynamics of its representations in literature and art. Across genres, individual Greeks constructed visions of the party and its performances that offered persuasive understandings of the event and its participants. Sympotic representations thus communicated ideas which, set within broader cultural conversations, could possess a discursive edge. Hence, at the symposion, sympotic styles and identities might be (...) promoted, critiqued and challenged. In the public imagination, the ethics of Greeks and foreigners might be interrogated and political attitudes intimated. Symposia might be suborned into historical narratives about struggles for power. And for philosophers, writing a Symposium was itself a rhetorical act. Investigating the symposion's discursive potential enhances understanding of how the Greeks experienced and conceptualized the symposion and demonstrates its contribution to the Greek thought world. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper seeks to establish whether the cognitive penetration of experience is compatible with experience having nonconceptual content. Cognitive penetration occurs when one’s beliefs or desires affect one’s perceptual experience in a particular way. I examine two different models of cognitive penetration and four different accounts of the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content. I argue that one model of cognitive penetration—“classic” cognitive penetration—is compatible with only one of the accounts of nonconceptual content that I identify. I then consider (...) the other model of cognitive penetration—cognitive penetration “lite”. I provide reasons to think that this is compatible with three accounts of nonconceptual content. Moreover, I argue that the account of nonconceptual content that it is not compatible with is a spurious notion of nonconceptual content that ought to be abandoned. Thus, I claim that cognitive penetration lite is compatible with all reasonable specifications of nonconceptual content. (shrink)

Francis Dunlop; Louis Arnaud Reid on Understanding, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 143–151, https://doi.org/10.1111/.

This paper argues that in Christian Wolff’s theory of knowledge, logical regimentation does not take the place of experiential justification, but serves to facilitate the application of empirical information and clearly exhibit its warrant. My argument targets rationalistic interpretations such as R. Lanier Anderson’s. It is common ground in this dispute that making concepts “distinct” issues in the premises on which all deductive justification rests. Against the view that concepts are made distinct only by analysis, which is carried out by (...) the understanding independently of experience, I contend that for Wolff some distinct concepts are arrived at through experience. I emphasize that Wolff countenances empirical methods of obtaining distinct concepts even in mathematics. This striking feature of his view indicates how its empiricist elements can be reconciled with his injunction to follow “mathematical” method. (shrink)

This title was first published in 2002: Kolnai's later work in moral philosophy is well-known, and interest in it continues to grow, but his dissertation, Ethical Value and Reality, has received little attention - although Kolnai himself said that it contains the germs of nearly all his subsequent thought. This first English translation of the dissertation and of two related papers from the same period will enable the English-speaking reader to explore Kolnai's ethical work as a whole. In Ethical Value (...) and Reality Kolnai proposes a 'completion' of phenomenological value-ethics which takes account of 'the embeddedness of ethical values in reality'. Kolnai explores moral psychology and offers important perspectives on political activity in its moral dimensions, on the relation between morality and religion, and on the relation between the moral point of view and the psycho-therapeutic. Dunlop's comprehensive introduction to the translation provides the reader with assistance in understanding the text, setting it in its contemporary context, and relating it to Kolnai's subsequent writings. (shrink)

'I sincerely believe that Dr Kolnai is one of the most original and stimulating thinkers in the field of political philosophy alive today' (Karl Popper). Kolnai's moral and political thought was developed against the background of Liberal and then Bolshevist revolutions in Hungary, the gradual move towards fascism in twenties and thirties Vienna, and the progress of the second world war as seen from the USA. Born a Jew, he became a Roman Catholic, and lived successively in Hungary, Austria, France, (...) the USA, Canada and England. He remained, throughout his extraordinary life, a passionate believer in reason and common sense, and the sworn enemy of all philosophical and political systems. Study of Kolnai has been hampered by political developments, his own peripatetic life, and the fact that his writings appeared in five different languages, yet interest in Kolnai is now growing. This book offers the first comprehensive picture of Kolnai's complete works and life. Dunlop presents Kolnai the man in his social and political setting, and offers an accessible exploration of all his writings, whether published or not, including translated passages from papers and letters in Kolnai's various languages. Including a selective bibliography of Kolnai's works, this book presents an important study of this unique political and moral philosopher, showing his relevance in contemporary philosophical thought. (shrink)

J. H. Lambert proved important results of what we now think of as non-Euclidean geometries, and gave examples of surfaces satisfying their theorems. I use his philosophical views to explain why he did not think the certainty of Euclidean geometry was threatened by the development of what we regard as alternatives to it. Lambert holds that theories other than Euclid's fall prey to skeptical doubt. So despite their satisfiability, for him these theories are not equal to Euclid's in justification. Contrary (...) to recent interpretations, then, Lambert does not conceive of mathematical justification as semantic. According to Lambert, Euclid overcomes doubt by means of postulates. Euclid's theory thus owes its justification not to the existence of the surfaces that satisfy it, but to the postulates according to which these "models" are constructed. To understand Lambert's view of postulates and the doubt they answer, I examine his criticism of Christian Wolff's views. I argue that Lambert's view reflects insight into traditional mathematical practice and has value as a foil for contemporary, model-theoretic, views of justification. (shrink)

Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one's cognitive system, for example, one's thoughts or beliefs? If one thinks that this can happen then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitively impenetrable. I claim that there is one alleged case of cognitive penetration that cannot be explained away by the standard strategies one can typically use to explain away alleged cases. The case (...) is one in which it seems subjects' beliefs about the typical colour of objects affects their colour experience. I propose a two-step mechanism of indirect cognitive penetration that explains how cognitive penetration may occur. I show that there is independent evidence that each step in this process can occur. I suspect that people who are opposed to the idea that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable will be less opposed to the idea when they come to consider this indirect mechanism and that those who are generally sympathetic to the idea of cognitive penetrability will welcome the elucidation of this plausible mechanism. (shrink)

Ethical perspectives on regional, rural, and remote healthcare often, understandably and importantly, focus on inequities in access to services. In this commentary, we take the opportunity to examine the implications of normalizing metrocentric views, values, knowledge, and orientations, evidenced by the recent (2022) New South Wales inquiry into health outcomes and access to hospital and health services in regional, rural and remote New South Wales, for contemporary rural governance and justice debates. To do this, we draw on the feminist inspired (...) approach to rural health ethics involving analysis of power relationships developed by Simpson and McDonald and related ideas from critical health sociology. In presenting this analysis, we extend contemporary thought about spatial health inequities and structural violence. (shrink)

Part 1 of this article exposed a tension between Poincaré’s views of arithmetic and geometry and argued that it could not be resolved by taking geometry to depend on arithmetic. Part 2 aims to resolve the tension by supposing not merely that intuition’s role is to justify induction on the natural numbers but rather that it also functions to acquaint us with the unity of orders and structures and show practices to fit or harmonize with experience. I argue that in (...) this manner, intuition serves the epistemological function of warranting generalizations and justifying practices. In particular, it justifies the application of group-theoretic notions in geometry but not the use of set-theoretic notions in arithmetic. (shrink)

Newton characterizes the reasoning of Principia Mathematica as geometrical. He emulates classical geometry by displaying, in diagrams, the objects of his reasoning and comparisons between them. Examination of Newton’s unpublished texts shows that Newton conceives geometry as the science of measurement. On this view, all measurement ultimately involves the literal juxtaposition—the putting-together in space—of the item to be measured with a measure, whose dimensions serve as the standard of reference, so that all quantity is ultimately related to spatial extension. I (...) use this conception of Newton’s project to explain the organization and proofs of the first theorems of mechanics to appear in the Principia. The placementof Kepler’s rule of areas as the first proposition, and the manner in which Newton proves it, appear natural on the supposition that Newton seeks a measure, in the sense of a moveable spatial quantity, of time. I argue that Newton proceeds in this way so that his reasoning can have the ostensive certainty of geometry. (shrink)

Interrogating the concepts of allegiance and identity in a globalised world involves renewing our understanding of membership and participation within and beyond the nation-state. Allegiance can be used to define a singular national identity and common connection to a nation-state. In a global context, however, we need more dynamic conceptions to understand the importance of maintaining diversity and building allegiance with others outside borders. Understanding how allegiance and identity are being reconfigured today provides valuable insights into important contemporary debates around (...) citizenship. This book reveals how public and international law understand allegiance and identity. Each involves viewing the nation-state as fundamental to concepts of allegiance and identity, but they also see the world slightly differently. With contributions from philosophers, political scientists and social psychologists, the result is a thorough appraisal of allegiance and identity in a range of socio-legal contexts. (shrink)

In a crucial passage of the second-edition Transcendental Deduction, Kant claims that the concept of motion is central to our understanding of change and temporal order. I show that this seemingly idle claim is really integral to the Deduction, understood as a replacement for Locke’s “physiological” epistemology (cf. A86-7/B119). Béatrice Longuenesse has shown that Kant’s notion of distinctively inner receptivity derives from Locke. To explain the a priori application of concepts such as succession to this mode of sensibility, Kant construes (...) the mind as receptive to its own activity. As Longuenesse understands Kant’s response to Locke, “motion” becomes little more than a metaphor for the action of understanding on inner sense. For Michael Friedman, in contrast, this passage evidences Kant’s deep concern with the foundations of Newtonian science. He reads it as a reference to inertial motion, the standard by which temporal intervals are measured. I show that Longuenesse’s and Friedman’s interpretations are in fact complementary. Both Locke and Kant are deeply concerned with the quantification of time. So Longuenesse is right that §24 is meant to supplant Locke’s account, and Friedman correctly takes it as the foundation of Kant’s account of the application of quantitative concepts to time. Kant aims, specifically, to explain cognition of time as continuous magnitude. However, Longuenesse leaves Kant without an answer to Locke’s challenge that continuous magnitude cannot be understood on the basis of discrete magnitude. And on Friedman’s view Kant’s account of the understanding’s activity presupposes, and thus cannot explain, the achievements of the mathematical sciences (such as the representation of temporal continuity). On my reading, Kant’s key contention is that we must regard the segregation of temporally ordered representation into units as the work of the understanding, rather than (as Locke views it) of sensibility. By giving the understanding this role, Kant succeeds where he takes Locke to fail. I show how the power to unify temporal representation can be ascribed to the understanding on the basis, not of assumed mathematical or scientific knowledge, but of its characterization as the power of judgment. (shrink)

This powerfully iconoclastic book reconsiders the influential nativist position toward the mind. Nativists assert that some concepts, beliefs, or capacities are innate or inborn: "native" to the mind rather than acquired. Fiona Cowie argues that this view is mistaken, demonstrating that nativism is an unstable amalgam of two quite different--and probably inconsistent--theses about the mind. Unlike empiricists, who postulate domain-neutral learning strategies, nativists insist that some learning tasks require special kinds of skills, and that these skills are hard-wired into (...) our brains at birth. This "faculties hypothesis" finds its modern expression in the views of Noam Chomsky. Cowie, marshaling recent empirical evidence from developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, computer science, and linguistics, provides a crisp and timely critique of Chomsky's nativism and defends in its place a moderately nativist approach to language acquisition. Also in contrast to empiricists, who view the mind as simply another natural phenomenon susceptible of scientific explanation, nativists suspect that the mental is inelectably mysterious. Cowie addresses this second strand in nativist thought, taking on the view articulated by Jerry Fodor and other nativists that learning, particularly concept acquisition, is a fundamentally inexplicable process. Cowie challenges this explanatory pessimism, and argues convincingly that concept acquisition is psychologically explicable. What's Within? is a clear and provocative achievement in the study of the human mind. (shrink)

Francis Dunlop; Human Dignity and Direct Awareness, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 169–180, https://doi.org/10.1111/.

Francis Dunlop; Form, Content and Rationality in Morality and Moral Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 78–97.

The distinction between doing and allowing appears to have moral significance, but the very nature of the distinction is as yet unclear. Philippa Foot's ‘pre-existing threats’ account of the doing/allowing distinction is highly influential. According to the best version of Foot's account an agent brings about an outcome if and only if his behaviour is part of the sequence leading to that outcome. When understood in this way, Foot's account escapes objections by Warren Quinn and Jonathan Bennett. However, more analysis (...) is required to show what makes a relevant condition part of a sequence. Foot's account is promising, but incomplete. (shrink)

Unlike those with type 1 blindsight, people who have type 2 blindsight have some sort of consciousness of the stimuli in their blind field. What is the nature of that consciousness? Is it visual experience? I address these questions by considering whether we can establish the existence of any structural—necessary—features of visual experience. I argue that it is very difficult to establish the existence of any such features. In particular, I investigate whether it is possible to visually, or more generally (...) perceptually, experience form or movement at a distance from our body, without experiencing colour. The traditional answer, advocated by Aristotle, and some other philosophers, up to and including the present day, is that it is not and hence colour is a structural feature of visual experience. I argue that there is no good reason to think that this is impossible, and provide evidence from four cases—sensory substitution, achomatopsia, phantom contours and amodal completion—in favour of the idea that it is possible. If it is possible then one important reason for rejecting the idea that people with type 2 blindsight do not have visual experiences is undermined. I suggest further experiments that could be done to help settle the matter. (shrink)

Synaesthesia is most often characterised as a union or mixing of the senses. i Richard Cytowic describes it thus: “It denotes the rare capacity to hear colours, taste shapes or experience other equally startling sensory blendings whose quality seems difficult for most of us to imagine” ([1995] 1997, 7). One famous example is of a man who “tasted shapes”. When he experienced flavours he also experienced shapes rubbing against his face or hands. ii Such popular characterisations are rough and ready. (...) What is certainly true about synaesthesia is that it involves the interaction between sensory phenomena: in response to certain stimuli some sensory phenomena are elicited in synaesthetes that are not elicited in non-synaesthetes. However, the exact nature of the additional sensory phenomena forms a large part of the debate on the nature of synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is a condition that has been known about for some time. In the late nineteenth century, and early twentieth, century very many articles appeared on the topic in the psychological literature. iii Much of this work on synaesthesia relied on introspective reports of subjects. In consequence, when later in the twentieth century psychologists eschewed introspective reports and radical behaviourist methodology became the order of the day, synaesthesia was rarely a topic of research. In more recent times, however, psychology has once again changed tack. With the advent of cognitive psychology and of objective techniques that try to probe the nature of conscious states of the mind that are reported in introspection, psychological interest in synaesthesia has resumed. Many new findings about the subject have recently been brought to light. In philosophy, interest in synaesthesia is only just beginning to arise. The phenomenon is potentially philosophically interesting for several reasons.. (shrink)

Although the focus of "Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights" is practical, Gould does not shy away from hard theoretical questions, such as the relentless debate over cultural relativism, and the relationship between terrorism and democracy.

This paper examines the representationalist view of experiences in the light of the phenomena of perfect and relative pitch. Two main kinds of representationalism are identified - environment-based and cognitive role-based. It is argued that to explain the relationship between the two theories a distinction should be drawn between various types of implicit and explicit content. When investigated, this distinction sheds some light on the difference between the phenomenology of perfect and relative pitch experiences and may be usefully applied to (...) describe the nature of experiences in the other sense modalities. (shrink)

Kant’s Mathematical World (KMW) is a strikingly original, richly detailed account of Kant’s philosophy of mathematics as a reckoning with the long-held understa.

This volume will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, and the starting point for future research in this fascinating ...

Merleau-Ponty identifies an intertwined affective state of anxiety and courage, claiming that these are one and the same thing, as a fundamental characteristic of human existence. I argue that trust, understood as phenomenologically basic, is the unity, or the something beyond, the singularly conceived states of anxiety and courage, and that trust itself cannot be conceived apart from these states. Merleau-Ponty says little, directly, about trust in his work, yet his focus on the fundamental precariousness of existence demands such an (...) exploration. I explore how our ordinary day-to-day experience of existence is related to an intertwined affective state of anxiety and courage and how trust is operative in affective depth, in order to understand how it is we come to speak of trust not only in terms of proximity and distance, emotional depth and extension across time, but most markedly, in terms of how we see someone and what it is like to be in relation to them. (shrink)

The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing , touching, tasting, and smelling. But what makes the senses different? How many senses are there? How many could there be? Wha t interaction takes place between the senses? This introduction is a guide to thinking about these questions.

In this paper I offer a reading of one of Plato's later works, the Sophist, that reveals it to be informed by principles comparable on the face of it with those that have emerged recently in the field of critical thinking. As a development of the famous Socratic method of his teacher, I argue, Plato deployed his own pedagogical method, a ‘mid‐wifely’ or ‘maieutic’ method, in the Sophist. In contrast to the Socratic method, the sole aim of this method is (...) not to disabuse the reader or learner of her false opinions. Rather, its purpose is to supply her with the skills and dispositions as well as the claims and counter‐claims she needs to critically evaluate a view, and so facilitate knowledge acquisition, for herself. But the text does not merely teach critical thinking in this indirect manner. One of the strategies its author employed was to encourage the reader/learner to consider under what conditions a claim or idea would be false. To the extent that it achieves this, the Sophist provides both a model and an application of that particular kind of critical thinking in the learning environment that Jonathan Baron has described as ‘active open‐mindedness’. (shrink)

This book challenges readers to rethink rural health ethics. Traditional approaches to health ethics are often urban-centric, making implicit assumptions about how values and norms apply in health care practice, and as such may fail to take into account the complexity, depth, richness, and diversity of the rural context. There are ethically relevant differences between rural health practice and rural health services delivery and urban practice and delivery that go beyond the stereotypes associated with rural life and rural health services. (...) This book examines key values in the rural context that have not been fully explored or taken into account when we examine health ethics issues, including the values of community and place, and a need to “revalue” relationships. It also advocates for a greater attention to meso and macro level analysis in rural health ethics as being critical to ethical analysis of rural health care. This book is essential reading for those involved in health ethics, rural health policy and governance, and for rural health providers. (shrink)

This paper explores the potential for an international political theory of care as an alternative to liberalism in the context of contemporary global politics. It argues that relationality and interdependence, and the responsibilities for and practices of care that arise therewith, are fundamental aspects of moral life and sites of political contestation that have been systematically denied and obfuscated under liberalism. A political theory of care brings into view the responsibilities and practices of care that sustain not just ‘bare life’ (...) but all social life, from nuclear and extended families to local, national and transnational communities. It disrupts and challenges the individualism of liberalism, and the associated valorization of ‘freedom’, ‘autonomy’, and ‘toleration’. Instead, it emphasizes an ontology of relationality and interdependence that accepts the existence of vulnerability without reifying particular individuals, groups or states as ‘victims’ or ‘guardians’. Furthermore, by demonstrating the gendered and raced nature of caring in the contemporary world—from the household to the transnational level—an international political theory of care challenges our received assumptions about ‘dependence’ in world politics, and opens up space to interrogate politically not only gender but race and other aspects of inequality in the global political economy. (shrink)

The concept of orthodoxy is not prominent in the thinking of mid-twentiethcentury writers on religion. There are many reasons for this. It is, for instance, always more interesting to challenge accepted traditions than to defend them, and publishers know that radical questioning generally attracts more attention than defence of received ideas. But the task of defending orthodox beliefs is an absolute necessity for the adherents of a revealed religion. It may be unpalatable to have to examine a long succession of (...) ‘reinterpretations’ of Christianity, but it is important, since the new thinkers may often get things badly wrong, and the faithful may be seduced by superficial plausibility or flashy modernity.One can well imagine a person who has found Christianity attractive enough for him to pray and to attend church services occasionally, but whose world-view has been largely formed by the mass media, discovering one of the modern ‘reinterpreters’ of the Christian faith with an enormous feeling of relief. (shrink)

_Review of: Anderson, Abraham, _Kant, Hume, and the Interruption of Dogmatic Slumber_, New York, Oxford University Press, 2020, 180+xxii, 978-0-19-009674-8_.

Not a full treatment of Newton’s scientific method, this book discusses his optical research only in passing (342–43). Its subtitle better indicates its scope: it focuses narrowly on the argument for universal gravitation in Book III of the Principia. The philosophical project is to set out an “ideal of empirical success” realized by the argument. Newton claims his method is to “deduce” propositions “from phenomena.” On Harper’s interpretation Newton’s phenomena are patterns of data, which are used to measure “parameters” by (...) which the theory explains them. An example is Kepler’s Area Rule. Its fit to the data confirms the hypothesis that the force maintaining a body in orbit is directed toward the .. (shrink)

This study develops and tests an empirical model of consumer punishing behaviours in third-party ethically questionable situations. The model examines the impact of perceived injustice, consumer-company identification, identification with the victim, and consumer involvement on punishing behaviours. A number of ‘real-life’ ethical scenarios are employed to generate over 1000 data responses from a self-administered questionnaire. The positive influence of perceived injustice on punishing behaviours is the most supported hypothesis of the study. The relation between consumer-company identification and punishment is in (...) part mediated through perceived injustice and also depended upon the employed scenario, with both negative and positive relations identified. An important positive relationship between identification with the victim and punishment behaviour was identified. No significant support exists for the influence of consumer involvement in the issue on punishing behaviours. (shrink)